BiblioVault - Books about New York (N.Y.)

Harlem Between Heaven And Hell
Monique M. Taylor
University of Minnesota Press, 2002
Library of Congress F128.68.H3T39 2002 | Dewey Decimal 305.80097471

A hard-hitting look at race, class, and black gentrification in this emblematic community. Harlem brings to mind a kaleidoscope of images-the jazz clubs and cultural ferment of the 1920s and 1930s, the urban decay of the 1960s and 1970s, and the revitalization of the past twenty years, with artists, writers, professionals, and even an ex-president moving to a community often seen as the capital of black America. Integral to the ongoing transformation of Harlem has been the return of the African-American middle class to what had become an overwhelmingly poor area. In this lively book, Monique M. Taylor explores the stresses created by this influx, the surprising ways class differences manifest themselves and are managed, and what we can learn from examining a community in which race and class are so closely intertwined. Harlem between Heaven and Hell is told through a look at history, literature, redevelopment strategies, community activism, and extensive interviews with black professionals-married and single, with children and without, long-term residents and recent arrivals. In their voices we hear of the cultural legacy, political commitments, economic considerations, and desire for community that drew them to Harlem. They tell us of the complexities of gentrification and their own role in it: the trepidation and distrust that often greeted their arrival, the challenges of renovating Harlem's historic brownstones in the face of entrenched neighborhood decay, learning and shaping the social mores of the area. Two key questions underlie these accounts: What does it mean when blacks move in alongside blacks of a different social class? How can a neighborhood successfully balance racial and class diversity in the face of rapid change? Taylor places this intraracial class conflict within the context of America's changing race relations, showing how the feelings and issues that have arisen-to oppose, embrace, or participate in gentrification-reveal unsettled questions surrounding race, racism, class, and culture in a changing urban landscape. Through her incisive description of the everyday ways race and class are experienced, she has created a vivid exploration of black middle-class identity in the post-civil rights era. Monique M. Taylor is associate professor of sociology at Occidental College.

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Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America
John L. Jackson Jr.
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Library of Congress F128.68.H3J33 2001 | Dewey Decimal 974.71

Harlem is one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world—a historic symbol of both black cultural achievement and of the rigid boundaries separating the rich from the poor. But as this book shows us, Harlem is far more culturally and economically diverse than its caricature suggests: through extensive fieldwork and interviews, John L. Jackson reveals a variety of social networks and class stratifications, and explores how African Americans interpret and perform different class identities in their everyday behavior.

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Hasidic People: A Place in the New World
Jerome Mintz
Harvard University Press, 1992
Library of Congress F128.9.J5M46 1992 | Dewey Decimal 974.71004924

In this engrossing social history of the New York Hasidic community based on extensive interviews, observation, newspaper files, and court records, Jerome Mintz combines historical study with tenacious investigation to provide a vivid account of social and religious dynamics. Hasidic People takes the reader from the various neighborhood settlements through years of growth to today’s tragic incidents and conflicts. In an engaging style, rich with personal insight, Mintz invites us into this old world within the new, a way of life at once foreign and yet intrinsic to the American experience.

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Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God's Love We Deliver
Courtney Bender
University of Chicago Press, 2003
Library of Congress BL2527.N7B46 2003 | Dewey Decimal 306.6097471

How do people practice religion in their everyday lives? How do our daily encounters with people who hold different religious beliefs shape the way we understand our own moral and spiritual selves? In Heaven's Kitchen, Courtney Bender takes a highly original approach to answering these questions. For more than a year she worked in New York City as a volunteer for a nonprofit, nonreligious organization called God's Love We Deliver, helping to prepare home-cooked meals for people with AIDS. Paying close attention to what was said and not said, Bender traces how the volunteers gave voice to their moral positions and religious values. She also examines how they invested their conversations, and mundane activities such as cooking, with personal meaning that in turn affected how they saw their own spiritual lives. Filled with vibrant storytelling and rich theoretical insights, Heaven's Kitchen shows faith as a living practice, reshaping our understanding of the role of religion in contemporary American life.

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Hidden New York: A Guide to Places That Matter
Reaven, Marci
Rutgers University Press, 2006
Library of Congress F128.18.R42 2006 | Dewey Decimal 917.4710444

Despite its innumerable tourist attractions, New York City still has many secrets, hidden in the most unlikely places. There is the Edison Hotel in Times Square, where magicians gather 'round the Magic Table to socialize and compete. There is Hua Mei Garden in the Lower East Side, where elderly Chinese men meet to display exotic birds. And there is Sahadi's in Brooklyn, where the culinary arts thrive, and New Yorkers go for just the right ingredients for a Middle Eastern meal. This book details thirty-two unusual locations such as these and enhances them by including a cluster of additional, related spots. Hidden New York shows you why these places matter and guides you through the historical and cultural significance of each one.

Many of them matter because of the opportunities they provide for socializing, such as the Empire Roller Disco in Brooklyn that attracts a community of skaters and the Cube sculpture on Astor Place, which is a meeting spot for homeless youth. Others matter because they are focal points for communities and the spaces are intertwined with how people share in each others' lives. Still others have been lost, like the house under the roller coaster in Coney Island, made famous by Woody Allen in Annie Hall.

This book is not just about Manhattan, but covers all five boroughs in New York City. It is an invitation to visit, revisit, learn, and enjoy all that you didn't know the city has to offer. It will show you what's there, what used to be there, and why it will be there for years to come. The chapters, illustrated with appealing black-and-white photos, include first-person remembrances and commentaries from New Yorkers themselves. Each entry functions as a small travel essay, evoking how certain destinations are experienced. As a guide to the New York City that is less traveled, this unique book shows that some of the best places to visit are ones that you never even thought existed.

The 32 Places That Matter
Hua Mei Bird Garden
Russian and Turkish Tenth Street Baths
Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden
The Magic Table at the Edison Hotel
The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesman
Webster Hall
The Cube
Stickball Boulevard and the Stadiums of the Street
Thomas Jefferson Park Pool
Empire Roller Skating Center
Chess Havens
Coney Island
The Lemon Ice King of Corona
Coney Island Bialys and Bagels
Sahadi's Specialty and Middle Eastern Foods
Arthur Avenue Market
Union Square Greenmarket
The Village Vanguard
Casa Amadeo Record Shop
Richmond Barthé's Frieze at Kingsborough Houses
Quirky Features of the Landscape
Art in the Subways
Governors Island
Casita Rincón Criollo, Magnolia Tree Earth Center, Liz Christy Bowery-Houston Community Garden
The Flower District
Fishing around New York
Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum
Masjid Al-Taqwa
Ganesha Hindu Temple
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grotto
The Memorials of the Battery
Strawberry Fields

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House Hold: A Memoir of Place
Ann Peters
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
Library of Congress PS3616.E8375Z46 2013 | Dewey Decimal 813.6

Like the house built by Ann Peters’s father on a hill in eastern Wisconsin, House Hold offers many views: cornfields and glacial lakes, fast food parking lots and rural highways, Manhattan apartments and Brooklyn brownstones. Peters revisits the modern split-level where she grew up in Wisconsin, remembering her architect father. Against the background of this formative space, she charts her roaming story through two decades of New York City apartments, before traveling to a cabin in the mountains of Colorado and finally purchasing an old farmhouse in upstate New York.

More than a memoir of remembered landscapes, House Hold is also an expansive contemplation of America, a meditation on place and property, and an exploration of how literature shapes our thinking about the places we live. A gifted prose stylist, Peters seamlessly combines her love of buildings with her love of books. She wanders through the rooms of her past but also through what Henry James called “the house of fiction,” interweaving personal narrative with musings on James, Willa Cather, William Dean Howells, Paule Marshall, William Maxwell, and others. Peters reflects on the romance of pastoral retreat, the hazards of nostalgia, America’s history of expansion and land ownership, and the conflicted desires to put down roots and to hit the road. Throughout House Hold, she asks how places make us who we are.

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